GA4GH Implementation Forum

Diverse scientific and clinical groups meet in the GA4GH Implementation Forum (GIF), from rare disease research teams to national initiatives stewarding thousands of human genomes. They find ways that GA4GH products can solve real-world problems.

Empowering science through interoperability

When GA4GH products work together, scientists can study more data from more places. This leads to new genomic discoveries that improve healthcare.

To support implementers around the globe, GIF runs pilot projects that demonstrate how GA4GH products can power such end-to-end solutions.

In GIF, multiple institutions tackle problems together — leading to more interoperable systems. Participants include Individual Contributors, Driver Projects, Organisational Members, and Strategic Partners. They find and fix pain points to help future adopters of GA4GH products.

GIF Projects get dedicated staff support and a sounding board of genomics leaders from the GA4GH community. By joining GIF, genomic data sharing initiatives can take advantage of this valuable network of expertise and solve their real-world challenges.

Three strategies

GIF Projects use three strategies to achieve interoperability. These strategies build on the 2020 Connection Demos, which simulated how a researcher can search, access, and analyse genomic data using GA4GH standards.

The “horizontal” demo showed interoperability across data providers. The “vertical” demo showed interoperability between standards. The “cross-platform” demo showed interoperability between both providers and standards. Learn more about the Connection Demos in a webinar and podcast.

What do you want to achieve with GA4GH products?

A diagram showing a "horizontal" strategy for enabling interoperability, reliably producing the same research results regardless of your choice of platform.

01
Horizontal interoperability

Reliably produce the same research results regardless of your choice of platform.

A diagram showing a "vertical" approach to enabling interoperability by integrating a suite of GA4GH standards within an institution.

02
Vertical interoperability

Integrate a comprehensive suite of GA4GH standards within your institution to answer a scientific inquiry.

A diagram showing a cross-platform approach to interoperability, enabling real-world disease research using data and services across institutions.

03
Cross-platform interoperability

Conduct real-world disease research using data and services across institutions.

Leadership

Ian Fore
Ian Fore
NIH National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)

GIF Lead

Product lead for: Federated Cohort Building

Brian O’Connor
Brian O’Connor
Sage Bionetworks

GIF Lead

Work Stream lead for: Cloud Work Stream

Product lead for: Data Repository Service (DRS)

GIF projects

GIF projects aim to put GA4GH products into practice in real-world scenario. Explore our current GIF projects below. Have a use case that would make a good GIF project? Propose a project or see eligibility criteria.

Federated Variant-Level Matching (VLM) Project

The VLM project aims to support a global federated network of genomic databases, powered by GA4GH standards.

Want to implement GA4GH products now?

See our customisable and out-of-the-box tools for developers around the globe.

Implementation examples

Learn how other organisations have implemented GA4GH products to solve real-world problems.

Developer resources

Explore our customisable and out-of-the-box solutions to help you get started.

Have a question?

If you have any questions, please reach out to GIF managers Neerjah Skantharajah and Yasmeen Kurdi.